The real fun is when all the tempests have died down and readers come back in a hundred years, sometimes the original work is prized for its genius without the clutter of its imitators, and sometimes the original work was riding on its pure originality and it was the imitators who actually put the trope to good work.
(As for why "we" like zombie movies -- as for me, I like necromancers in my stories, but I give 'em skeletons.)
Obviously the difference..."... figuring out the difference in separation between a story ripping off a popular trope, and a story riffing on that same trope..." is:
Ppff....
or in other words in the eye of the reader. You can have one thing in the whole story that is kinda the same if you squint, and some readers will say that you plagiarized the whole thing. And you have have a bunch of things exactly the same...and they will think you invented everything whole cloth.
I hope my humor came through on that, I'm very stuffy and somewhat ill...not braining great and filters not working well.
The real fun is when all the tempests have died down and readers come back in a hundred years, sometimes the original work is prized for its genius without the clutter of its imitators, and sometimes the original work was riding on its pure originality and it was the imitators who actually put the trope to good work.
(As for why "we" like zombie movies -- as for me, I like necromancers in my stories, but I give 'em skeletons.)
Nice clean dry skeletons are much better, at least in the olfactory sense.
Cedar, one of my favorite Kiplings is "When 'Omer Smote". Kipling recognized that there are only so many Stories, but near infinite ways to tell them.
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/when_omer_smote.html
"They knew 'e stole; 'e knew they knowed.
They didn't tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at 'Omer down the road,
An' 'e winked back -- the same as us!"
Yes!
"Not sure how you’d justify reanimation of sparkling zombies beyond handwaving ‘magic’ but still. Imagine the mayhem of glitterati shamblers!"
The crystals absorb energy from lights strung by geologist and paleontologists studying how the process of crystallization works.
I can see it as a horror film more than prose, but yeah, I can see it.
Obviously the difference..."... figuring out the difference in separation between a story ripping off a popular trope, and a story riffing on that same trope..." is:
Ppff....
or in other words in the eye of the reader. You can have one thing in the whole story that is kinda the same if you squint, and some readers will say that you plagiarized the whole thing. And you have have a bunch of things exactly the same...and they will think you invented everything whole cloth.
I hope my humor came through on that, I'm very stuffy and somewhat ill...not braining great and filters not working well.
Hope you feel better soon!